Trivia Sans Culottes

Is it just me or is the trivia circuit becoming more, shall we say, nude? I'm aware of no fewer than three strip trivia games taking place these days, in addition to my own Chaos Trivia/Truth or Dare, which is seldom particularly buttoned up (and was most definitely not last night).

Of the strip trivias, the one I've been aware of the longest is held at Kokomo Beach on Wednesdays at noon and sometimes in the evening. A host asks questions, and if you answer correctly, you get to instruct someone else present to take off an article of clothing and choose which one they need to remove. I've only been once, but the group was great, the questions were fine, and everyone seemed pretty eager to get undressed. It was listed as only an hour long in Events, though, yet the event seems to have lasted longer than that, and I had to leave after the first hour to conduct emergency trivia elsewhere. Very friendly vibe, but if you're new there, you might not be comfortable asking others to take clothes off for you; they might also have reservations about doing the same to you.

Samantha Poindexter's strip trivia, which is now at Escort Island on Friday nights at 8:00, follows almost the opposite format. It's very, very different, but it's a great event in its own right. She has twenty-five questions, five in each of five categories, and I must say that she quickly became one of my Most Admired Hosts. She has tight questions with varying difficulty levels, and she's interested in testing people, rather than stumping them, a distinction that is actually built into the rules. Rather than the stripping being a reward for right answers, it's a penalty for wrong answers at Sam's game. If you answer incorrectly, you take off an article of clothing. Each player is only allowed one guess -- two if she needs to give a hint -- and if no one is able to answer the question even then, then she removes a piece of clothing herself for writing a question that was too hard. Sam also has one of the best trivia rules I've heard: "consulting the Web, and accusing other people of having consulted the Web, are both illegal. Let's keep it fair AND civil."

It's another fun one, with very nice people, and since you only have to undress yourself and not others, a layer of awkwardness is peeled away. The downside of this setup is that this strip trivia barely lives up to its name. If you don't want to lose your clothes, simply don't answer questions if you're unsure of the answer. I've even tried to come up with a wrong answer for every question I didn't know and still didn't get very naked.

Only one of the strip trivia games I've been to has disappointed. This one was at a club called ImpassioneD, and I saw it listed early Saturday morning last week. I zipped on over to check it out. A woman and two men were gyrating (clothed) on stripper poles on the stage, while several other people were dancing in sync on the floor. A trivia ball was in operation, asking L$5 questions. I was told that if I got one right, I could ask "a dancer or a close friend" to remove an article of clothing. I was the only one answering questions for a while, and so I began asking the dancers on the stage to take clothing off. They did not comply. They just continued dancing as if they hadn't heard me.

And they probably hadn't. All of the staff were in voice chat, talking amongst themselves. There was some attention to text chat going on, but inevitably they missed some of the local, especially, it seemed, mine and Rach's (at least my close friends undress for me when I tell them to :P). I didn't really enjoy the voice chatter at Triana's music trivia, and the same problem applied here. In both cases, machines were doing the talking when it came to the questions, too, which means that the host ends up having very little direct communication with the players.

Although there are ways to use voice during a trivia event effectively -- for instance, it's never bothered me when Reke chats about music over voice during Name That Tune because he's continually involved in text the rest of the time -- doubling it with questions generated by a trivia machine is not the way to go. Reke is also the only person using voice when he uses it, so he's not carrying on a separate conversation from the text-only people but speaking directly to the entire group each time he does it. It should be noted that the event in question is Name That Tune. It would be inappropriate for the host to use voice at all at a non-music trivia event or at an event where the questions themselves do not require hearing (another example where it would make sense is if the host plays audio clips or media without captioning).

Finally, there is a strip trivia event that no longer takes place but that merits mentioning because those who attended it seem to have enjoyed it when it was running. This is Zoey Bowie's game, and I never made it there, but here's my understanding of how it worked. All of the questions had two options, and the two sides of the room were designated A and B. When Zoey asked a question, players would have to choose one answer or the other and move to the appropriate side. If you turned out to be on the wrong side, you needed to remove a piece of clothing. If everyone guessed correctly, Zoey would do the removing. Oh, and you could only wear up to five articles of clothing.

With all these different variations on the core concept of stripping players down to their Redgraves and Rockberries, it makes me wonder what the draw is for so many people -- hosts and players alike. I thought of strip trivia as a concept last summer before I was aware that other games might already be taking place mostly because I like the idea of upping the stakes and taking risks. Also, the idea of a two-person, private strip trivia game is the sexiest thing that this trivia nerd can think of. I'm glad that Chaos emerged instead of a traditional strip trivia game because it's so different, but other organizers have found very distinctive and creative ways of getting smartypants out of their smartypants themselves.

Some people, I imagine, are voyeurs, and others are probably exhibitionists. Still others are probably on the perpetual lookout for new events to attend. There is also a necessarily interactive side to strip trivia. In games where you need to ask another person to undress, there is already more required contact between different players than if you're simply answering questions from a host. Even in those where the rules tell you when to strip, rather than another player, a good game will always have a lot of teasing and playfulness about it, as well as an open attitude toward newcomers (which I found to be the case at Kokomo and at Sam's but not at ImpassioneD). The interactive atmosphere might thus create a particular appeal for some.

In addition, there is one characteristic of strip trivia that seems to apply across the board, which is that they attract a large number of people who don't ordinarily play trivia. At Chaos, we get a good number of "trivia people," but there are also some who don't really go to any other games. When I choose questions for Chaos, they tend to be easier than the ones I choose/write for Bucc Bowl or Impromptu, specifically so that those non-regulars will know some. They still might not beat out the fastest typists, but at least they can try.

Do you go to strip trivia or anything comparable? If you do, what interests you about it? If you don't, what turns you off? Do you know of any games, past or present, that I didn't cover? If so, did they do anything exciting or innovative or notable?